Worst. Person. Ever., Coupland's first full-length novel in a few years, is nothing short of twisted genius, a seething chorus of expletive-laden musings about modern culture. Raymond Gunt, Coupland's rueful narrator, is a foul-mouthed, sex-crazed misogynist and unemployed cameraman with few redeeming qualities. He has scored a job to shoot a Survivor-type reality show from his ex-wife, Fiona, whom he describes as an "atomic bomb of pain." Soon, he befriends a homeless, Duran Duran-loving personal assistant named Neal, whom he intends to enslave while on the job.

Along the way, the tables are turned against Raymond: Neal's sweet temper and tenderheartedness curry favor with the very ladies Raymond tries to woo; Raymond's penchant for cruel wisecracking earns him repeat trips to the slammer; and when he does finally reach his remote island destination, he stumbles upon an endless sea of chaos and comic misfortunes, all while attempting to make lemonade out of lemons. "When things turn to sh*t--as they invariably do--I never think it's me who's done something wrong. It's the f***ing universe having a bad day, and I just happened to be there."

Coupland is a master at creating reprehensible slackers who just happen to be disarmingly likeable and lovable, with a barbarous wit that stings in its assessment of mass culture. The result is a sort of strange poetry, a love song of humanity's hopeful nihilism and thirst for self-destruction delivered with Coupland's characteristic sarcasm and deadpan humor. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

On New Year's Day in 1880, a steam-driven packet boat from Palermo delivers a mysterious stranger to the little village of Vigata, where everyone knows each other's secrets. His presence greatly upsets 90-year-old Don Filippo, whose body is soon found in the surf, an apparent suicide. Then Don Filippo's mentally challenged son is found poisoned by mushrooms--even though he was a mushroom expert. Is it just a coincidence that, long ago, the new arrival's father had his throat cut in Vigata--a crime that was never solved?

Vigata, the imaginary Sicilian setting for Hunting Season--a lean, addictive mystery from Italian noir superstar Andrea Camilleri--is the setting, too, of Camilleri's contemporary Inspector Montalbano series. At the center here is the young stranger, always at the right place at the right time, resisting the overtures of the lusty Signora Clelia while befriending everyone with his skills and advice. Secret love and filial vengeance keep the town simmering as the members of the Peluso family begin dying mysteriously, one by one.

Figuring out who the central characters are in this dark Sicilian comedy is half the fun, and Camilleri leads you down several false trails before the real plot begins to emerge. Teeming with dozens of earthy rural types, crackling with hotheaded Italian insults, each combustible scene bubbles with emotions of every variety. Camilleri's work feels effortless as he toys with alternate choices like a playful driver twisting the wheel, swerving across the line, fooling his passengers into screams, repeatedly inspiring that delicious, familiar chill of doubt. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.

Lady Lilith Randor's recently deceased father was the head of the Lazarus Coven, a group of witches skilled in necromancy and bound to protect the Great Secret and the Elixir of Life, tools that can raise the dead. Young and untried, Lilith must succeed her father as Head Witch as the world tenses in anticipation of the first World War and the coven falls under attack by the Sentinels, an organization of fell sorcerers who will stop at nothing to obtain the means to raise an army of dead men.

Even as she takes on the mantle of leadership, Lilith finds the Sentinels have infiltrated her coven. Her personal life is no safe haven, either, as she finds herself collecting her brother, Freddie, from an opium den and seeking excuses to delay her wedding to the handsome fiancé who shares her magic and secrets, but whom she does not love.

Artist Bram Cardale is pulled into Lilith's orbit by chance when she accompanies a friend to a portrait sitting. Bram isn't a witch and is far below her social station, but Lilith can't seem to stay away.

In Brackston's romantic, deadly world, duty must outweigh personal desires. She does a fine job of evoking the Edwardian period, from glamorous gowns to the clash between old values and the increasingly modern morals of the young aristocracy. A story of sacrifice, loss and power, this dark tapestry is sure to delight fans of both paranormal and historical fiction. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

In Adam Christopher's (Empire State) new novel, the space station Coast City is being disassembled in the far reaches of space, right next to Shadow, a bizarre star that gives off creepy, communications-disturbing radiation, along with purple light. Military hero Captain Abraham "Ida" Cleveland has been sent to the decommissioned station, ostensibly to lend his expertise to the efforts, though it feels more like being mothballed himself.

Yet something is terribly wrong. Any mention of Ida's heroic battle with powerful alien entities is missing from the fleet archives. There's no record that entire space ships ever existed. Hardened soldiers are disappearing aboard the station, and the Commandant has departed unusually early. Even Ida's status on Coast City is questioned by the forces onboard. To kill time and avoid suspicious marines, he builds a radio that accesses subspace--forbidden frequencies of strange audio--which carries the voice of a Russian cosmonaut across space and perhaps time to haunt Ida's dreams. All the while, personnel continue to vanish into very thin air.

What Ida and his grudging allies find at the end of the known universe will test their resolve and abilities more than anything they've ever encountered before. This hard science-fiction horror story latches onto the imagination and never once lets up, with intense thrills set in the unforgiving reaches of space, exploring the depths of space, time and the human condition. Christopher weaves solid characterizations with spooky visual atmospherics, leaving readers with an engaging sense of dread. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor

Teeny Lamothe has been baking her entire life, making pies from recipes handed down over generations. But when she wanted pie-baking to become a career rather than a hobby, she opted to skip pastry school and instead go for a degree in "lady bakership," complete with her own lesson plan and a one-year tour of the best woman-run pie baker shops in the country. Teeny's Tour of Pie is the result of that tour: 67 recipes plus tips on everything from mastering new skills to identifying the perfect baking shoes.

Lamothe starts with an overview of the necessary pie-baking tools and equipment before moving on to instructions--and recipes--for the perfect crusts. From there, her recipes are organized by season, drawing upon local, seasonal produce in a variety of sweet and savory pie options. Lamothe's original recipes are interspersed with some from the pie shops she visited, as well as shop profiles, tips on storing ingredients and anecdotes about the histories of various pies. From rosemary caramel apple pie to Sweet Sensations' browned butter pear pie to apple and pork potpies, each recipe is accompanied by full-color, Instagram-style photography that celebrates the beautiful imperfections of each pie. Teeny's Tour of Pie is the kind of cookbook that will be well loved and well used; Teeny herself encourages readers to "smear it with butter, dust it with flour, stain it with berry juice, and most of all, make a lot of pie." --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Sara Barron (People Are Unappealing) comes off as one of those friends who is blunt, honest and refreshingly candid. She makes you laugh because she says the things you might have thought but never had the gumption to verbalize. The Harm in Asking, her second essay collection, brings together those verbalizations about the weird, hilarious, silly, odd little moments that make up her everyday life and, by extension, all of our lives.

Barron--a frequent host of the Moth's live storytelling event in New York City and a contributor to Showtime's This American Life and NPR's Weekend Edition--writes about all sorts of topics that might cross our brainpans: k.d. lang, mayonnaise, male catalogue models. In regard to smoking pot in college, she writes, "I would hallucinate any number of the following: 1) That my throw pillow had come to life. 2) That I was a duck. 3) That I was on a boat decorated in an 18th-century baroque style." When working at a fancy restaurant, "I was expected to serve these rolls with fork and spoon, and the challenge of this posed to my physical dexterity was on par with serving a tray of tennis balls with a pair of chopsticks."

Her takes on loves and loves lost, city living and the trials and tribulations of being a human being will invite comparisons to essayists like David Sedaris, Jonathan Ames and Sloane Crosley. Not bad company, and all safe bets if you want a good chuckle and some joy in knowing we're all a little nuts. --Jonathan Shipley, freelance writer

William Easterly, an economist specializing in development and foreign aid, begins The Tyranny of Experts with a thought experiment based on the 2010 displacement of 20,000 poor farmers--at gunpoint--so that a British company financed by the World Bank could use the land for commercial forestry. Imagine that it had happened in Ohio rather than Uganda, he writes. Ignoring the rights of the farmers would have been unthinkable.

He uses this example to argue against conventional solutions to poverty, which rely on large-scale development to drive economic growth (in addition to technical approaches like better fertilizers or access to antibiotics and nutrition). Such efforts often require backing from global organizations like the World Bank and their public and private sector partners. However benevolent their aims, these programs fail when they ignore individual rights. Easterly traces the history of authoritarian development to the Treaty of Versailles and argues that it is still informed by a colonial sensibility. Only when individual rights are respected, including those of the poorest, can individual enterprise contribute to a more enduring solution.

Easterly makes essential points about human rights, the need to accommodate local factors in developing countries and the terrible mistakes that can result from deals with corrupt regimes or self-interested organizations. His argument is made with passion and ample illustration. It is also a polemical one, however, and, like all polemics, compromised by an unwillingness to acknowledge the limits of ideological approaches or the successes of others. Poverty is an enormous and complex problem. The solution requires a range of strategies and perspectives; Easterly's should be one of them. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer

Leslie Jamison follows her debut novel, The Gin Closet, with an essay collection that has earned her the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. The Empathy Exams opens with Jamison's experience as a medical actor. In this role, she is given a character complete with not only symptoms, but behaviors like failure to make eye contact and dishonesty. Through her portrayals, Jamison contemplates what it is to feel, how we communicate what we feel and what we do with these communications.

While all her essays are linked by the topic of empathy, the subjects range widely, though injury and chronic illness receive repeated treatment. The Barkley Marathon, a grueling, almost unfinishable race through Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, is presented both as a subcultural phenomenon and a subtext for pain. Jamison attends a conference for Morgellons patients--who believe they are infested with fibers and foreign matter crawling out of their skin--and the few doctors who will take them seriously; she finds herself responding with such empathy that she is in danger of catching the disease herself.

Throughout, Jamison makes references to many thinkers and influences, such as Lucy Grealy (Autobiography of a Face), Susan Sontag and Frida Kahlo, as well as her own friends. Her essays often dwell in the theoretical and the academic. She is interested in philosophies, and admits to difficulty experiencing, recognizing and sharing her own emotions--a difficulty which occasionally manifests in pedagogy. However, readers will finish with no doubt that she is sincere in her quest to own, identify and comprehend empathy. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

A group of interlocking mysteries forms the center of this middle-grade novel narrated by 12-year-old Kester Jaynes. Like the other wards of Spectrum Hall, Kester is told that "your parents want to, ahm, f-f-forget about you."

But a memory haunts Kester of someone slipping through the dark of night, into the home he shared with his newly widowed father, and a stranger saying, "Kester Jaynes?... You're coming with me." Other mysteries plague Kester: What was the cause of the "red-eye" disease that wiped out all livestock? How did Selwyn Stone and his Factorium get to be in charge of the food supply? Was Kester's father, a prominent vet and "honourable scientist," privy to information that resulted in Kester being taken away? What's the meaning of his mother's last words: "Tell Dad he has to tell you?" While alone in a corner of the penned-in yard, Kester discovers that he's a kind of Doctor Doolittle: he can hear and speak to animals. They tell Kester that they are helping him escape from Spectrum Hall. And they do.

A quest follows, in which the animals explain to Kester that he is the one sent to save them. A majestic stag, leader of "the last wild," the only survivors of the disease, carries Kester on his back. They meet up with armed men, a girl holding out to stay with her infected cat, and many others in their travels. This is a life-affirming story in which children redeem their corrupt elders by doing the right thing. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

A girl who resists the inevitable move her family plans to make also refuses to say good-bye, but she comes up with a palatable alternative.

"Posy Peyton doesn't want to move," Liz Garton Scanlon's (All the World) book begins. "She doesn't want to pack her books or take down her bird feeder or undecorated her secret clubhouse." But what she really does not want to do is say good-bye. Posy's friend Megan shares her mother's advice: "We should enjoy the time we have." Posy's other friend Mae delivers her mother's words of wisdom: "We should count our lucky stars we're such good friends." The girls make a pyramid and help Posy take down the pictures in the clubhouse, but the colors of Kady MacDonald Denton's palette stick to drab olive, mustard and burnt orange. When the industrious friends decide to make a pie--"hot, sweet, good pie," as Mae puts it--Posy gets an idea. Vibrant red, gold and deep blue enter the illustrations as the friends help Posy carry out her plan. They light up with smiles and get an infusion of energy: they make a list, a clever, rhyming invitation goes out, and the pages cascade with color as friends, lawn chairs and energy enter the scene.

The gathering does not change the outcome for Posy--she and her family must still move--but she and Mae and Megan find a way to make peace with the situation and to honor their friendship. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness